A DAY IN THE DEEP WOODS. I43 



the Southern Sea was hidden by a veil of mist and 

 fog. It was nearly dark, though perhaps not very 

 late ; but the cloud of mist aided approaching night, 

 and I was apprehensive that exposure would result to 

 our injury, especially as there was no roof to cover us 

 and no material for making a fire. My implicit faith 

 in the resources of my guide was not unrewarded, for 

 we had descended but a short distance when he cried 

 out, pointing to an immense rock as large as a church, 

 just in sight farther down, "You no see ajoupa?" 



It was, as I said, a huge rock, so delicately poised 

 upon a spur from the main ridge that it seemed ready 

 to fall. We seemed surrounded by an almost intermi- 

 nable forest beneath, while above towered the twin 

 mountain-peaks, bare and gray. As those near peaks 

 were more than five thousand feet above the sea, we 

 were now in a region cold and bleak, forty-eight hun- 

 dred feet above the coast. Meyong had called this 

 rock an ajoupa, and there must be, I knew, some 

 reason for it, as he was one of those matter-of-fact 

 persons who call a spade a spade. Just as we reached 

 an angle of the rock he turned abruptly from the trail 

 and dived beneath another rock into a hole about 

 breast-high. Following him, I found myself in a 

 spacious cavern hollowed out of the rock, with an 

 entrance on the mountain-side just large enough to 

 admit a man conveniently. 



The sudden transition from the howling of a tem- 

 pest to comparative silence, from the fury of a pelting 

 rain to the shelter of a roof, was bewildering, and I 

 looked about me in wonder. While I stood in the 

 semi-darkness that wrapped everything in gloom, the 

 water dripping from my saturated garments, Meyong 



